At least nobody threw haggis, even at this joke (slightly modified from how it was delivered):
The other day, my friend told me she’d just received a delivery of a dozen red roses from her boyfriend. “I suppose this means I’ll have to be spending the weekend with my legs in the air,” she said. “Surely you have a vase?” I said, bemused.
As I said, at least nobody threw haggis. Small mercies.
The next time I consider agreeing to do a stand-up comedy routine on gender relations, in the crypt of a church, in front of a Christian ecumenical group mostly composed of puritanical American Protestants, who will most likely have large portions of uneaten sheep entrails at their disposal, will somebody please stop me?
Of all the ways there are to die, death by haggis is probably one of the least dignified.
(For anyone who’s mystified as to the occasion I describe above, a little clarity is available here. Just a little, though. My apparent longing for public humiliation remains inexplicable.)
Ha. Pitchfork may poke fun at my favourite band a little too gleefully, and I really don’t think NYC Ghosts and Flowers was quite as dire as the 0.0 Brent DiCrescenzo gave it, but at least they’re funny, and often spot-on.
The NYC Ghosts review has this exceptionally penetrating insight about Kim Gordon’s vocal contributions to the album (hey, in my opinion, every album. I’ve written about it before.):
“Elsewhere, it’s straight spoken word, or in Gordon’s case, “grunted word”– the quality of which brings to mind freshman poetry classes where that one Doors worshiper recites beat prose to the general embarrassment of the entire class.”
From a recent news update:
“In Sonic Youth side project news, keep an eye out for the Supreme Indifference on Kill Rock Stars. The trio consists of Jim O’Rourke, Alan Licht, and Kim Gordon. The first track has been titled “Male in-Communication.” We suspect it is hideously experimental.”
Is it just me being overly harsh, or is someone who calls up Xfm voting for Blur as the ultimate epitome of Britpop and then says the one song from their entire repertoire that represents this is Song 2 just a complete moron?
On days like this I want to wear this T-shirt.
Excuse this grumpiness. I have spent the day trying to absorb the subtleties of English Conflict of Laws rules on jurisdictional clauses. In practice this means I have spent the day falling asleep at my desk, and have the pen stain on my cheek to prove it.
Alec takes issue with my strip-club entry and demands an opportunity to clarify things. I see no reason for this defensiveness on his part. In my opinion the people teasing him about this all just secretly wish they had a boyfriend to go to strip clubs to with too, although I suppose I should make no such conclusions about Fr John.
Nevertheless, he feels besmirched and who am I to deny a good Irish Catholic boy the chance to dredge his reputation up from the muddy gutters it already languishes in?
(Published as received. All mistakes his.)
Michelle I demand that the following be printed in full on your web site.
Following the entry of January 7th, I find position in good society considerably undermined. In my defence……
* I was prompted to consider this entertainment by a friend (who shall remain nameless).
* Rather than show my distain outright and attach my friend’s moral shortcomings, I started to ruminate a more edifying scheme. Soon I had resolved that it would be more educational for my friend to be confronted not just by my own moral ire but also by the prospect of Michelle’s company throughout the performance. I pictured the scene thus; (friend sitting at table staring at stage with vacant, lecherous stare. Enter Alec and Michelle. Friend joyfully welcomes Alec to his world of filth. At this moment he recognises Michelle. I volunteer to purchase the drinks and exit stage right while friend is left to squirm, uncomfortably and make awkward chit chat with Michelle. Soon after friend is overcome by embarrassment and requests that we move to a more respectable venue)
* May I add that at this point the scheme was merely an amusing fancy which I mentioned to Michelle for our mutual amusement. However Michelle took to the scheme with an enthusiasm which was on the one hand, very worrying, but on the other quite infectious.
* The plan eventually came to nothing because the ‘club’ ceases performances at midnight. Anyone who knows Michelle will understand why this is a problem. As an aside may I suggest that any club which closes doors at midnight can only be mildly debauched.
* That evening was instead spent watching Austin Powers: the Spy who Shagged Me – and I’d didn’t feel at all disappointed.
In the last few days my good name has been dragged through the mud. Everywhere I go people make inquiries about this particular date and smile and wink and whisper behind my back. I have even had interested inquiries from my parish priest. Enough! I ask you the readers of this site to respond to this slander against my character my inundating this website with emails saying ‘Morally vindicated’.Michelle should not be allowed to use this site to spread half truths and lies just to satisfy the vulgar, sensationalist, tabloid interests of her readers (i.e. Mark).
Alec
Miscellaneous disjointed updates:
After spending more time and energy thinking about eyelash-tinting than mentally healthy, I’m pleased to report that we won Wednesday’s moot and are in the next round of the competition. Notable successes of the day included restraining ourselves from referring to Jennifer Lopez’s butt insurance while trying to argue that “Demi Massinger”, the model suing our beautician client, could bloody well have gone and insured her eyelashes if they were that important to her career. Also satisfactory was our efficient downing of Screaming Orgasms and peach margaritas in the 20 minutes we had in the pub before we had to catch the train back to London. A rather fulfilling day.
Don’t bother with Pacha London on a Friday night unless you want to see the tackiest chandelier ever, and pay nearly twice the price (£15!) for half the quality of music you can get in Turnmills. The crowd was friendly and unpretentious, though, which is always good. Even Martini Breath Guy who felt it was very very important to talk to me in order to promote the interaction of Western and Eastern cultures, and who simply couldn’t understand that my name was not Mya-Chung or Mi-Choo or something else vaguely Oriental sounding, was amusing for about ten minutes.
The dominatrix boots have received their first wearing. I managed to teeter quite successfully through the Egyptian and Greek sections of the British Museum, although staircases raised minor issues. Teething problems. I’ll whip these boots into shape soon enough.
Django is showing me love for the first time in a long while. Goodbye 20th Century (Sonic Youth) and Sounds From The Gulf Stream (Marine Research) are hopefully pootling their way across the Atlantic to me. Yay.
I’m not really much of a lyrics person. It doesn’t really matter what Sonic Youth or Fugazi are singing to me as long as it sounds good with the guitars. Other Tori Amos fans gape at me in disbelief when I confess that I don’t really bother reading her lyrics. Apparently they’re deeply meaningful. I’m generally indifferent to the sort of music review where the reviewer quotes extensively from lyrics and concludes that the album is about redemption or tortured love or dark nights of the soul or whatever. I tend to home in on descriptions of how it all sounds and ignore analysis of meaning and themes.
I’ve always felt a bit guilty about this – sort of shallow and non-indie. Most people I’ve mentioned this indifference to lyrics to have certainly reacted with surprise and a little bemusement, and I suppose I’d get raised eyebrows from the A-list music bloggers as well if any of them read this blog (ha, I think not). I can’t really figure out why this is either – I love words intensely in every other context, but the pleasure I derive from most of the music I listen to is overwhelmingly sensory rather than emotional or intellectual.
This doesn’t mean that music lyrics are completely meaningless to me; they do affect my appreciation of music but in a limited and asymmetric way. If I already find a song musically appealing, lyrics I like make me like it more, but bad lyrics have negligible effect.
Which is why it’s unusual that I love Silver Jews’ American Water. There are lines throughout it that jump out at me and elevate what would otherwise feel like exceedingly pleasant but humdrum alt-country to an album of moods and stories and places. Random Rules has In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection; I know that a lot of what I have to say has been lifted off of men’s room walls; and But before I go I gotta ask you dear about that tan line on your ring finger, which are all quite amusing, but something in the ending gives it a similar sort of poignance as Papa Was A Rodeo (Magnetic Fields) except perhaps not as sharp. Wild Kindness closes the album saying I’m going to shine out in the wild silence and spurn the sin of giving in, later I’m going to shine out in the wild kindness and hold the world to its word, and I don’t even really know what this means, but it feels good to hear him sing that.
This happens elsewhere too. I’ve written about Papa Was A Rodeo before. Lyrics are more important to me in rap, and are the absolute essence of why I love 8pt Agenda (Herbaliser featuring Latyrx) madly, and rather enjoy Eminem. Lyrics (and okay, I admit, my secret hopeless romanticism. Stop laughing.) are big reasons why Somebody (Depeche Mode), Sometimes When We Touch (Dan Hill) and Annie’s Song (John Denver) render me weak-kneed, sappy-smiled and mushy-hearted. My enjoyment of Hefner’s The Fidelity Wars is equal parts funny lyrics and appealing melodies.
But most of the time lyrics don’t mean that much to me, which is why I went hmmmm while listening to American Water last night. Funny how these rambles of mine get triggered.
Today there seemed to be an exhilaration in My Vitriol’s Always Your Way that I never quite noticed before. Walls of sound that shimmer and ripple and whirl themselves round you rather than remain static. Amazing energy in the guitars. I’ve been meaning to listen to the album for a while – this was a timely reminder.
Maybe it’s just that I was at my wits’ end trying to write the damn moot arguments (see previous post), but it reached out and grabbed me in a way nothing else on Xfm managed to the whole day, and yes, they did play The Strokes’ Last Night, which I remain completely underwhelmed by.
Clearly, when I am under severe pressure not to let UCL down when I represent it tomorrow in the Blackstone’s Moots, the most important things I should be doing with my time should include redoing my desktop icon/wallpaper combinations, (re)reading December’s edition of Cosmo, and attempting to dance to Alien Ant Farm’s rendition of Smooth Criminal, all this rather than actually writing legal arguments as to why “Demi Massinger, a well-known model” shouldn’t be able to claim damages from my beautician client for losing her opportunity to be a Bond Girl due to a disastrous eyelash tint.
Clearly.